1 More Sleep Til The Weekend!

I had an extra 20 minutes of snuggle time under my warm blankets today because I didn’t go into work until 8:30. I just laid in bed and listened to my kids having a conversation downstairs…yes, they are that loud in the morning! It’s funny to hear their conversations sometimes. DS must’ve woken up in a good mood because he made toast and PB for not just himself, but his sister, too. I’m actually surprised he was up by 6:30. I usually have to drag him out of bed at the last possible minute!

Here’s my morning eats!

-1/2 cup oat milk (it’s all gone now)
-1/2 cup water
-1/2 cup Quaker oats
-2 Tbsp wheat berries
-1/2 mashed banana
-1 Tbsp dried fruit
-cinnamon

Another successful meal! I don’t have any picture proof, but I wanted to share with you what my hubby puts in his morning oats. For the record, his bowl mortifies me! He does the whole microwave thing with 1 cup water, ½ cup oats. So far so good. Once he’s got that to his right consistency, he stirs in a glob of butter and a huge handful of brown sugar. Wait….it gets worse! He pairs it with toast and butter that he uses as a scoop!!!! Have I grossed you all out? Maybe some of you think this sounds really good. Who knows?! To each his own, I guess! He laughs at me when I make “EEWW” faces at his bowl. BLAH!

I did end up buying that blueberry latte from 7-11 last night. I also ate this little brownie bite with it;

Now, if my cat’s could talk, they would probably rat me out and tell you that 2 more brownies found their way into my belly!

Getting on with things, I ate another pineapple oat bran muffin as a pre-run snack.

This was all that was left when I remembered about my camera! Like a good little blogger, I stopped eating and took a photo of my remaining piece.

I got my interval run in today! That keeps me on track with my plan to keep things a bit different each run. Monday was incline day, Tuesday was normal run day, today was intervals and tomorrow we’ll see! Here’s my stats:

Time: 35:06
Avg HR: 159
Max HR: 184
Calories Burned: 310
Distance: 3.34 miles

Good thing I never took my treadmill numbers are true ones because today’s readout said I burned 565 calories! HAHA! I wish!

Lunch will look very familiar to you….

Turkey sausage and steamed veggies minus the couscous because I ate it all last night! And because my sweet tooth was rearing its ugly head for most of the day, I finally caved and made myself a skinny mocha in my very large Starbuck’s tumbler. This was a mix of diet Swiss Miss, instant decaf coffee & hot water. That’s it!

I’m very proud of this mocha because it would have been super easy to grab some chocolate out of the vending machine and even easier to dowse it with cream. At least I drank this knowing that I wasn’t wasting the 310 calories I burned on my run.

I did some planning in advance last night and pulled a turkey breast out of the freezer to thaw overnight so it would be ready for the crock pot this morning. DD has skating lessons which have us leaving the house no later than 5:10 and I like for her to have a decent meal in her belly. Potatoes, carrots and about a ½ cup of chicken stock joined the breast in the crock. I spiced it up with some dried oregano, basil, coriander, cumin, Mrs. Dash Chipotle spice, salt & pepper. When I got back from the rink I made a delicious turkey sandwich;

This is gobble gobble on a toasted Arnold Thin with Sabra hummus and a Laughing Cow cheese wedge. Served up with a side of steamed edamame. So. Good.

Before we left the house I ate an apple with a scoop of Mighty Maple PB.

Then I had a spoonful of PB straight from the jar. This is something that I would not do with regular old PB, but Mighty Maple is a whole different story!

And that my friends, is my day! I'm certain that a yogurt is in my near future as I'm craving a sweet something or other. Tomorrow is Friday! WAHOO!! Nothing like the weekend to look forward to!!

Bye for now!!

Feline Friends

Good day everybody!! Hope everyone’s day has gone smoothly so far! I started out my day with another fabulous bowl of oats this morning.


-1/2 cup oat milk
-1/2 cup water
-1/2 cup Quaker oats
-1/2 mashed banana
-2 Tbsp wheat berries
-1 Tbsp pecan pieces

I forgot the cinnamon but this bowl was awesome none the less. It reminded me of banana bread batter. Because I haven’t been using bananas much lately, I forgot how much volume they add to a ½ cup of oats! This was a whole lotta food!

When I started the van up this morning, it immediately started dinging at me and the oil light was on. I don’t have far to go so I drove it anyways and emailed my hubby when I got to work. He told me not to drive it home at lunch and stopped by on his way home from work to check it out. Long story short, he ended up driving it to the mechanic because he thinks the oil pump is fubar. How excited am I to see that repair bill?! UGH....

The morning moved along at a good clip. I’ll spare you all another picture, but I did eat a pineapple oat bran muffin around 11:30. I ended up taking a ½ hour lunch break around 12:30 to hop over to the office gym. They’re in the process of putting everything back together and invited me to put my 2 cents in seeing as I’m there 5 days a week. A company will be coming in on Friday to clean and place all the machines and part of Monday will involve a little elbow grease to clean it up. If luck stays on our side, it will be open for next Wednesday! I can not wait!

Lunch was basically the same as last night’s dinner minus the protein. Bad me, I know. I really need to try much harder at getting more protein in my diet. Too bad I just don’t like smoothies or that would be an easy fix. Anyways, here’s a photo of my asparagus, butternut squash fries and kale…..

Pretty exciting, eh??? I should fess up to eating my fair share of cinnamon hearts throughout the day. Damn, but they are addicting!! :~)

So, I’m looking for some suggestions/advice on hand cream. My hands are so dry that they’re white! UGH! Nothing I’ve tried thus far has worked. Glysomed, Curel, Vaseline hand lotion, Olay Quench….nothing. Anybody out there have a tried and true potion that works??? I’d sure appreciate hearing about it! THANKS! :)

I ate this delicious bowl of fruit salad this afternoon when our payrolls were done running.

Unfortunately, none of it is local, but I don’t know of many fruits that grow in this winter climate!! I’m just grateful for the sweetness of it! The kids each got a fruit salad in their lunch, too. They love the stuff!

Seeing as I've posted a few photos of Pepper, I figured it was time to stop playing favourites and post some pic's of the other 2 felines in my life!

This is Octavius. He's my grumpy almost 13 year old monster.

And Charlie, my 6 year old snuggle bug. I'm sure you can tell how impressed they are with "the baby" by looking at these photos! :) Well, I can't NOT post the little one! He's so cute!!!

Ahhh...Pepper!

I found some turkey sausage in the freezer so that's what we had for dinner. I can only get away with my hubby eating turkey sausage every now and again because he thinks sausage should be pork. So behind the times that poor man is! I also took another whirl at the Israeli couscous. This time I went for a more Mediterranean feel...

-1/2 cup chicken stock
-1/4 cup Israeli couscous
-6 black olives
-a strip of roasted red pepper
-1 Tbsp pecan pieces
-oregano, pepper, hot pepper flakes

*bring stock, olives, peppers and spices to a boil
*add couscous and simmer over low heat for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally
*cover and remove from heat until all liquid is absorbed, about 5 more minutes
*fluff with fork and serve

This was really good! Much tastier than the last time I made it. As I was eating it I realized that it would also be pretty good cold. To round out my plate I had some steamed veggies.

Super satisfying! My sweet end was a weetabix biscuit coated in some dark chocolate PB&C peanut butter.

Need I say more?? :)

Well, I'm off to the pool for an hour of relaxing reading while DD does her swimming lesson. Then I think I'll swing by 7-11 to grab a blueberry latte. I hope they still have that flavour!!

Bye for now!!

Monster Trucks!!!!

Hi All!!

Today's post will be on the short side because we're leaving around 5 for the big city (Toronto) to see Monster Trucks! We took DS for his birthday last year and had a great time, so we decided to go again. Luckily, it's only an hour's drive from our door to the Roger's Centre in downtown T.O., but we're leaving early to find some decent parking. Last year, our parking spot was a half hour walk away. No joke and it was just as cold as it is today!

Anyways, Marianne was kind enough to point out the the picture from my trip to the health food store in yesterday's post was MIA. Not sure what I did there, but it seems to be gone from my folder so I can't even re-post it! :(

I was out cold last night by 10pm. That's early for me! I guess all that shopping DD and I did at Old Navy wore me out! I found 2 great yoga outfits for Pilates for dirt cheap! Here they are;


I thought they were pretty cute! We toured the mall for awhile, but I managed to restrain from buying anything thing else. I did, of course, stop for a FREE Starbuck's on the way out! I found a freebie coupon in one of my magazine's for one of their new TAZO infusion blends. I tried the Vanilla Rooibos Latte. Unfortunately, I have no picture. I didn't bring Old Bessy with me because she is just too clunky to carry around! It was pretty good, though. I'd certainly buy another one!

I made a hearty bowl of oats to eat before I started the housework this morning!

-1/2 cup oat milk
-1/2 cup water
-1/2 Old Wessex 5 Grain cereal
-1/2 mashed banana
-1 Tbsp raisins
-1 Tbsp pecan pieces
-cinnamon

This bowl was SO good, just like banana bread, and took me forever to eat! I love the weekends for not having to rush through my breakfast! I might've been prolonging the housework, too! :)

Pepper had an appointment at the vet at 10am for his second round of booster's. He still has a clean bill of health but was none too happy about the poking an prodding that he received! Poor baby!

Doesn't he look sad? He now weighs a whopping 3.4lbs. Cute little runt!

I had a the classic soup n sandwich deal for lunch. I warmed up a serving of my bean soup and sprinkled it with some mozzarella. For the sandwich part, I toasted an Arnold Thin and smeared it with Sabra hummus and topped it with a piece of deli meat chicken.

"Dessert" was a piece of dark chocolate that I bought at Laura Secord last night...

Darn flash! I'm not sure how we are going to handle supper yet. Something will get figured out, though. Maybe we'll bring Subway along to eat on the way.

I've got about a 1/2 hour to do some blog reading, and then I need to hit the shower. I hope you all enjoy your Saturday night! See ya tomorrow with a Monster Truck re-cap and what we ended up doing about dinner!

Bye for now!!

A Neat Quiz

Hello everybody! How did Monday treat everyone??

I’ve noticed some new reader comments the last few posts and wanted to welcome all my new “guests”!! I really enjoy hearing what everyone has to say and sourcing out new and exciting blogs to read!

As usual for Monday, getting out of bed was a chore! I always feel so much better once I’ve had my morning shower. I made the most scrumptious bowl of oats this morning! They helped wake me up, too!

-1/2 cup oat milk
-1/2 cup water
-1/2 cup Quaker oats
-cinnamon
-3 huge frozen strawberries, thawed and chopped up
-1 Tbsp crushed up pecan pieces

This was seriously like dessert. OMG! I was sad to see the end of it. This is the brand of oat milk that I used.

I found it at Wegman’s on my last State side trip. I only bought one carton because I wasn’t sure if I would like it or not. I regret that now! Maybe I’ll get lucky and find some around here.

Had a good lunch run today even though my calves are sore from my Friday night Wii adventure!

Time: 32:16
Time in Zone:31:06
AVG HR:161
MAX HR: 225 (yeah, right!)
Calories:283

Not sure about the spike in my heart rate, but I can assure you that it didn’t get that high! It beeped there for a second and then went back to about 171. Weird stuff! I’m excited to get back to my Wii Wednesday’s now that my schedule is back on track. I’ve missed doing it!

Lunch was a hodge podge of stuff. I started with a few blueberries before I went home to run…

When I came back, I ate the last bit of my Mango Shrimp Salad from Friday. I guess it was about a ½ cup. Still tasted really good! It left me wanting much more than what I had!

After a bit of a busy spell at work, I ate about a ½ cup of 1% cottage cheese with a tbsp of apricot preserves. I love jam in my cottage cheese! You can buy them with the fruit on the bottom already, but it’s more cost effective to buy the plain cottage cheese and mix your own favourites into it.

Yesterday I posted a link for whether to keep or toss foods from your fridge and freezer. Another article I found worthy of mentioning in the January 2009 issue of Prevention Magazine was called “healthy cabinets”. It has loads of info on what to keep and what to toss in cabinets such as the medicine cabinet (where, it turns out, you should NOT keep medication) to items in your garage cabinets. Check it out here. There's a cool "what do you know" type quiz to see what you would keep or throw away. Some things are common sense, like a dish sponge. Others threw me. Send me a comment to let me know what you think of the article!!

So, I pulled a real stunner today which means I can't download my dinner pictures. Seeing as I'm using old Bessy until my camera is back from repair, I also have to use this ancient USB "thingy" to transfer the photo's. During the week I always get my post started at work because the internet is much quicker there and the picture's load really fast. Well, today I followed my trend and forgot to unplug the USB "thingy" so it is still at my computer at work. DUH! For the record, I had grilled chicken breast with mango chutney, Israeli couscous and sauteed purple kale. I will post the pic's tomorrow and give a review of the couscous, too.

As for me, I'm going to spend some time blog reading, then I have some more laundry to get done. DD is preparing a speech for class and I promised to help her with that. Her topic is "cats". She actually dug up some pretty good facts!

Hope everyone enjoys their Monday evening!

Bye for now!!

A Quick Recap of the Day

Hi everybody! I hope everyone's weekend is going GREAT! This will be a post with lots of pictures and not much text. I have 1/2 an hour to get this done as I was in Buffalo all day (Wahoo!) and my parents are due here shortly. I will be back to norm tomorrow, but I hope you enjoy the post regardless of it's lack of narrative!!

Breakfast;


Snack on the ride down. We made it from my front door to the mall in Buffalo in 1hr 45mins!

After some successful Christmas shopping...and some "me" shopping, we hit Panera for lunch. I had the Orchard salad and tomato mozzarella panini....delish!!


I saved my apple and ate it on the way home. While at the mall, the kid's enjoyed this "bear band"!!!


We hit up Barnes & Noble, Target and Wegman's...I skipped Kohl's this time as DS was becoming increasingly hard to deal with after his 5am wake up call! DD spent some time with good ole Jack Daniels at the duty free store.....:)

We were at home with a quick supper on the table by 5:45pm! On the menu was baked cod fillets, veggies and mac n' cheese (for the family);

And here's my loot!!! Here we have 100 calorie English muffins and WW & multi grain Arnold sandwich thins!! I've seen these ALL over blogland recently so I was stoked to come across them!


Next up---dairy! Fage (and LOTS of it!), whipped cottage cheese (can't find that here), Oikos yogurt (another recent star in blogland), a Weight Watchers yogurt, cinnamon plum tea jam (found this at Panera's), Kozy Shack Ready Grains oats (to try out)

Lastly, oat milk (finally found it!), Wessex 5 Grain cereal, Quaker bars, hazelnut milk, cinnamon bun Coffee Mate (a treat!), sweet potato puree, box of chocolate chip Z Bars, Progresso soup, seasonal clif bars, eggnog coffee and flatout wraps!

Of the non-edible variety, I bought a cute snowman bowl and a penguin cup at Target. I saw a Santa cup, but I didn't want to become Eating Benders cyber stalker!

So, there you have my stash!! I promise to be back to normal tomorrow. I'm hoping to have some time later on to do some blog reading, so please know that I'm not ignoring anybody!!

Bye for now!!